free-range politics, organic community

A Golden Opportunity

Submitted by dance you monster on Tue, 09/26/2017 - 10:16am

I read with some sadness this morning about a Trump golf course that had gone belly-up in Puerto Rico a while back. I'm kinda slow, and none too attentive to the real stuff that is important in this world, so it took a couple of years for the news to sink in. Of course recently a lot is going belly-up in Puerto Rico. I read speculation that the current troubles on that island will be likely to bring new efforts by the 0.001% to scratch out more opportunities (development, gentrification, more adamant demands that the island pay up on its debts), and one thought leads to another and then another and then the title of this entry. A certain president is fond of gold. Can we consider this moment to offer him an opportunity? To offer a lot of people a golden opportunity?

If the "response" to the devastation in Puerto Rico is discouraging enough, can we use this opportunity to welcome Puertorriqueños -- all of them -- to join us here on the Mainland for a spell. We'd need to house them, but I may have a solution for that, too.

There are 3.6 million American citizens populating that island. They may even be a little tired of it at the moment. There are 7 billion people populating the rest of the world, and a very selfish 0.001% of those are royally screwing it up for the rest of us. Indeed, with their other priorities at the moment, they are screwing it for those 3.6 million Puertorriqueños right now. Okay, maybe not all 0.001%, but surely half of those, so some 3.5 million of our betters.

What if we considered a swap?

We invite Puertorriqueños to the Mainland, as I suggested, and we house them in the mansions of the 0.0005% that will be vacated as we send those greedy, self-absorbed 0.0005% bastids to the island. Not to return. The 3.5 million savvy folks doing God's work (so they tell us) get paradise, sunny beaches, fancy hotels, a golf course here and there. Puertorriqueños get a break.

Note, I counted the world population. This is a way to help everyone in all nations. I like to be generous in my thoughts when I can. Give their greedy bastids a paradise, a Puerto Rican paradise they can shape anew in their image, and give those nations' populations a break. A break from the grasping. A break from the propaganda to send us to wars that exist only to further enrich the very rich. A break from corporate media that tell us the only way to live is how they tell us to live. A break from tax-evading, healthcare-withholding hedgefunders and bankers and arms manufacturers and frackers and pharma CEOs and lobbyist-loving politicians. And they get a break from having to hear our gripes. Win-fucking-win. right? And then the 99.9995% of us around the world can try to figure out how we'll survive the mess that 0.0005% left us.

There would be some confiscation of ill-gotten gains those 0.0005% bastids have been accumulating. Let's be generous, though (remember, I like to be generous when thinking). Let's give them a better base than they've given the rest of us. Let's only confiscate 98% of their wealth. That still leaves every one of them (these are really rich folks in that 0.0005%) a big ol' nest-egg to build new family empires on their island. Some of them will still have hu-u-uge nest-eggs, amirite?

A paragraph back I spoke of figuring out. That 0.0005% will have to figure out who gets to live where on the island (so whoever dashes there first has an advantage, just sayin'), who gets to make the rules for whom, and how to build their paradise just the way they want it. It's an opportunity for them to grow together, among their own, as they prefer. It could be the libertarian dream they espouse. As long as they stay there, we won't care. They wouldn't have to think about funding a military, 'cuz no one in the 0.0005% would serve, so all their wealth could go toward more lavish houses and golf clubs and wardrobes. Just think of the success stories, the how-the-better-fraction-lives stories they could tell each other in their island media.

Now, mind you, we back on the Mainland and throughout the rest of the world would have to figure out how to live without that 0.0005%. We'd have challenges to govern ourselves, to provide for each other's food and health and housing and economic well-being. We'd have to get back to repairing and upgrading our infrastructure for societal benefit, not the stock dividends of a few. Just getting our servicemen and women back home will be a logistical nightmare without the neo-liberals' guidance, but it's a sacrifice we all in this world will have to make. And that's an opportunity for us, too, to get some more training, as they say, to learn how to rise from our inferiority and become the productive members of society we've always been told (by the 0.0005%) that we aren't yet. With enough effort we could conceivably even become savvy, too.

Anyway, you know how one thought leads to another and another and so on. I have a bunch more thoughts to let my inferior mind wander to, and some low-level skills to exercise to keep food on the table, so I won't be hovering over the comments section as much as I'd like. But I toss this out there for you all to let your minds wander from thought to thought to thought. Hell, with some extra training, we might even be able to make something of all this thinking stuff. The 0.0005% would just outsource it, probably to some impoverished Caribbean island.

honestly defensive military to keep them out for good. Surround their island maybe, something to make sure they stay there and never get out!

And I think we take 99.5% of their money, that still leaves them more than enough to live on but we need to make sure they do not rapidly acquire more and get the means to threaten the rest of the world once again.

. . . produce weak militaries. You'd want to enable trade, so they can buy our goods to one-up each other in their villas (and restore more of their money to us), but just deny them anything weaponizable.

Without the means to control things elsewhere, why would they want to leave? They'd have golf courses on which to wage their petty private wars on each other. Of course, that means that some of them would have to stoop to operating a mower, or hire Haitians.

The percentage we confiscate as the 0.0005% relocate would be negotiable.

honestly defensive military to keep them out for good. Surround their island maybe, something to make sure they stay there and never get out!

And I think we take 99.5% of their money, that still leaves them more than enough to live on but we need to make sure they do not rapidly acquire more and get the means to threaten the rest of the world once again.

Why not just shift some of the ones currently threatening civilian populations at the borders/in the countries of various of those fossil-fuel/mineral/opium-rich unfortunates on the lengthy crush-or-kill-for-The Right-Corporate-Interests/Billionaires-profit list? Those not needed to blockade the island can do peace-keeping and rebuilding of shattered countries.

honestly defensive military to keep them out for good. Surround their island maybe, something to make sure they stay there and never get out!

And I think we take 99.5% of their money, that still leaves them more than enough to live on but we need to make sure they do not rapidly acquire more and get the means to threaten the rest of the world once again.

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4 users have voted.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

In that silly book all the "masters of the world" go off to deny the plebs their godlike presence and guidance. But I always wondered "who does the scut work?" The .001% are certainly too good to do household chores, muck out cattle pens, build their new mansions etc.

Send them off with no minions and let them learn what real work is like. If they get hungry enough they might try to do some of it.

. . . why we'd no longer need fear them. The best among them might be able to build a small sailboat.

In that silly book all the "masters of the world" go off to deny the plebs their godlike presence and guidance. But I always wondered "who does the scut work?" The .001% are certainly too good to do household chores, muck out cattle pens, build their new mansions etc.

Send them off with no minions and let them learn what real work is like. If they get hungry enough they might try to do some of it.

@MichaelSF
but they just plain and simply couldn’t. These are the people who have us commoners around so they don’t have to trouble their beautiful minds with the mundane. I fail to believe they could all of a sudden snap to even if they wanted to.

IIRC (it’s been ages since I tried to read Rand), it was implied that things just magically worked in Galts Gulch. Even as a teen, I could see problems with that. Either everyone was chipping in for the greater good, which sure as hell isn’t what Rand was advocating, or they had a serf class she failed to mention who actually did the dirty work. Either way, I wasn’t buying that her best and brightest “gone Galt” to become trashmen or dig ditches.

In that silly book all the "masters of the world" go off to deny the plebs their godlike presence and guidance. But I always wondered "who does the scut work?" The .001% are certainly too good to do household chores, muck out cattle pens, build their new mansions etc.

Send them off with no minions and let them learn what real work is like. If they get hungry enough they might try to do some of it.

how nice it would be for the islands of Hawaii, if there were a law that would not allow rich corporate 0.001 percenter investors, who buy out the land and force upon the islands gated communities with mansions (which prevents independent construction of people who buy a lot to construct low priced reasonable houses) ... would not allow them to leave their mansions empty for many more month a year than they use it for themselves.

They could house all the homeless, who populate the public beaches and parks, or they could house victims of environmental disasters, while they are gone and do their business on the mainland.

yeah, my little girl type of day dreams ... not gonna happen to be realized.

. . . and honestly considered that it's way too soon to have published the post I did up top. But in the end my anger at the Powers That Be who are ignoring or outright thwarting aid to Puerto Rico and other hurting populations got the better of me, and I posited this fantasy to consider if maybe we shouldn't find a way to put TPTB in front of the next hurricane and let them try to rebuild their lives for once. I guarantee that without massive outside help -- the help their I-got-mine libertarian impulses would deny to others -- they'd not be able to do it.

Our fellow Americans in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands are in peril. They need our help now.

. . . and honestly considered that it's way too soon to have published the post I did up top. But in the end my anger at the Powers That Be who are ignoring or outright thwarting aid to Puerto Rico and other hurting populations got the better of me, and I posited this fantasy to consider if maybe we shouldn't find a way to put TPTB in front of the next hurricane and let them try to rebuild their lives for once. I guarantee that without massive outside help -- the help their I-got-mine libertarian impulses would deny to others -- they'd not be able to do it.

up

4 users have voted.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

. . . and honestly considered that it's way too soon to have published the post I did up top. But in the end my anger at the Powers That Be who are ignoring or outright thwarting aid to Puerto Rico and other hurting populations got the better of me, and I posited this fantasy to consider if maybe we shouldn't find a way to put TPTB in front of the next hurricane and let them try to rebuild their lives for once. I guarantee that without massive outside help -- the help their I-got-mine libertarian impulses would deny to others -- they'd not be able to do it.

up

3 users have voted.

—

Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.